Dr. Brooks, hired by the police hospital as part of an overall program to integrate the staff, stays calm, collected and professional even as Ray spouts racist remarks, mistreating and offending him in public, in front of the other doctors and patients.

When Ray’s brother, who’s also wounded, dies in the hospital, the bigot holds Dr. Brooks responsible for the death. Moreover, he informs his gang of hoodlums to punish the city’s black residents.

Unexpectedly, though, the blacks fight the whites off. Ray then breaks out of the hospital, taking Dr. Brooks as a hostage. His plans to kill the doctor are thwarted by Ray’s girlfriend (the beautiful Linda Darnell), who takes a long time before realizing the extent and the source of the deep-held hatred.

The young Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, who would become major players in American cinema over the next half a century (including significant performances in Spike Lee’s 1989 “Do the Right Thing”), appear in secondary parts.

the best year in Mankiewicz’ career, in which he also won the Best Director and Best Screenplay Oscar for “Äll About Eve,” starring Bette Davis.

“No Way Out” was considered too provocative a film in 1950, but it paved the way to other liberal films out of Hollywood, not to mention the fact that it launched a spectacular career for the talented and handsome Poitier, who in a few years would win an Oscar and become the most popular movie star (white or black) in American cinema.

The performances of the entire cast are good. Linda Danrell, then at the peak of her career and beauty, appeared the previous year in Mankiewicz’s Oscar-winning “A Letter to Three Wives,” gives an emotionally strong performance. As for Widmark, he may be one of the few Hollywood stars, who could go back and forth between plays villains (he made his debut in the 1947 noir film, “Kiss of Death,” throwing an old woman down the stairs, off her wheelchair) and heroes in crimers, melodramas (Minnelli’s “The Cobweb”), and Westerns(John Ford’s “Two Rode Together”)

A decade after it was made, in 1962, “No Way Out” was still regarded too risky and controversial to be widely broadcast by NBC on its weekly, “Saturday Night at the Movies.”

Oscar Nominations: 1

Story and Screenplay: Joseph L. Mankiewicz and Lesser Samuels.

Oscar Awards: None

Oscar Context:
The winners of the Story and Screenplay Oscar were Charles Brackett. Billy Wilder, and D. M. Marshman for “Sunset Boulevard.”